10 Years of Weather History in 3 Minutes

NOAA's GOES-12 satellite was decommissioned on August 16th, 2013 after 3,788 days in service. From April 2003 -- May 2010, GOES-12 served as GOES East, providing "eye in the sky" monitoring for such memorable events as the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and the series of blizzards during the winter of 2009-2010. After suffering thruster control issues, GOES-12 was taken out of normal service and moved to provide greater coverage of the Southern Hemisphere as the first-ever GOES South. During that time it provided enhanced severe weather monitoring for South America. This animation shows one image from each day of the satellite's life -- a total of 3,641 full disk visible images.